Name: Dan
Country and Region: USA, Washington
Native Language: English
Student or Teacher: Student
Age or Grade: 1

Subject of Question: pronounciation

Question:

 I am currently studying ichthyology and all the species of fish have latin
names corresponding to their species. Lately, we came to the discussion
about reedfishes or "bichirs".    Their are many different ways instructors
pronounce the name and thus come to the question, What is the most accurate
way of pronouncing the name and what does it mean?
Some ways I have heard the name pronounced: Bichir - (bi-ker), (bi-car),
and (bi-cher).

"Bichir" is the common name of the genus Polypteri, not the scientific name, and therefore not Latin-derived. The etymology is obscure, given variously as French, Arabic and "Native Language." The genus was originally described by French biologists working in Egypt at the beginning of the 19th century. Hence, it is probably of local Arabic ("native") origin, originally introduced to the West in French.

The most common English pronunciations listed are "bitcher" and to a lesser extent "biker." The French pronunciation would be "beesheer," with the accent on the final syllable. We can only assume that this is a reasonably close phonetic representation of an original Arabic word. We were unable to come up with a literal meaning for this word, but it is probably safe to assume that it was a local descriptive term for this particular type of fish.

Considering the obscurity of this word and the obvious disagreement, even among ichthyologists, attempting to designate a "correct" English pronunciation is probably futile. We suggest picking the one that sounds best to your ears. Or perhaps you might wish to change pronunciation depending on which instructor you are speaking to (this is known in linguistics as "code-switching" or, more commonly, "sucking up").

If you wish to pursue the origins of the word further, the following original sources may have some more information. Please note, however, that they are in French, and that we were unable to locate a copy of either of them.

  1. Description d'un nouveau genre de poisson, de l'ordre des abdominaux, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Paris: E. Bull. Soc. Philomath (1802)
    Remarks: Sometimes date is given as 1798 [not researched]. Authorship appears as C. E. Geoffroy.

  2. Histoire naturelle des poissons, (1803) B. G. E. Lacepède. Hureau & Monod (1973)

-Chris Frost
For Ask a Linguistics Tutor
2/16/01